9. Willa
NINE
Willa
I’d learned a lot since I’d gotten free of the homestead.
Not necessarily about the outside world…although I’d learned a little about that. I was still kind of scared to leave the property; the Holt ranch was my safe place, Forrest’s cottage my panic room.
But I’d learned some things from my books.
At that point, I’d inhaled basically every romance novel Haven and Millie had handy. Haven had placed an order for even more novels; I’d read everything from regency to monster romance. Things were getting weird in my fictional world, and they were just…
…they were stagnant at home.
At the cottage, I mean—which had already become more of a home than the Daley homestead ever was.
I was already in bed when he came back in from talking to his brother—his brother, who had treated me like part of the family. I was tired from all the events of the day…meeting Sawyer and Daniela, spending time with the family.
But now I couldn’t sleep.
Now I was reading my book—a spicy scene, of course—and I couldn’t stop thinking.
I listened as Forrest came in, his footsteps followed by Nickel’s toenails on the wood floors. I listened as he puttered around for a few minutes…as he shut down the house.
As he went to his own room and shut the door.
And I was…
I don’t know.
I wanted something from him. Anything. I wanted, needed to talk about what had happened.
I was sick of feeling guilty. Sick of wanting.
I knew I wanted to stay, but I didn’t know if I could stay and deal with him treating me like I was a mistake.
Because that's what it felt like. Like I was something he regretted. Like those kisses were a lapse in judgment he was too polite to say out loud.
And I was sick of it.
I set the book down on my chest and stared at the ceiling.
The cottage was quiet. Just the creek and the goats and the stillness of the Hill Country, and somewhere down the hall a man who had kissed me back and then acted like it hadn't happened for two weeks.
I picked the book back up.
Read the same paragraph three times.
Put it down again.
No, I thought. No, this is not how this goes.
In every single book I'd read, the heroine waited. She was patient and she suffered prettily and eventually the hero came around on his own timeline. And maybe that worked for them. Maybe that was romantic.
But I had spent four years waiting. Four years being patient. Four years keeping my mouth shut and my head down and my wants to myself, and where had that gotten me?
I was done waiting.
I pushed the covers back before I could talk myself out of it.
I didn't think about what I was wearing, which was the pajamas Haven had given me the first night—soft cotton, white flowers on blue. I didn't think about my hair or my bare feet. I just walked to the door and went down the hall and stopped in front of his door.
The light was off underneath it.
I lifted my hand. Knocked twice, soft.
Silence.
Then: "Yeah."
Low. Awake. Like he hadn't been sleeping either.
"Are you up?" I asked.
A beat.
"I'm up," he said.
I put my hand on the doorknob.
Forrest was in bed when I walked in, the only light the moon streaming through the window. It took me a second to realize he was shirtless, reaching for a t-shirt—
“Don’t,” I said.
He went still.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I steeled myself, my fists clenched at my side…probably looking ridiculous in my pajamas. Then I took a deep breath, and said, “I need you to listen to me. I’m…I need to decide if I’m going to stay or if I’m going to go.”
He was quiet. Didn’t move a muscle. Just watched me.
I took a step toward him, and I could feel the heat bloom.
“I want you,” I said. “And I know you have some…some noble ideas about what’s right for me, but—I only want to know if you want me too. Not if you should have me, I don’t care about that. My whole life, I’ve been surrounded by men who knew what I needed. Who knew what I should and shouldn’t do.”
I took another step toward him.
“So I’m not asking what’s right. I’m asking what you want.
And I’m telling you that…if you don’t want me, I’ll go to the main house until I can save up enough, somehow, to leave Briar Hill, and I won’t look back.
Not ever. I’ll go out and live like you think is what I need, and I’ll always…
I’ll always wonder. Is that what you want? ”
It took him a second to respond. Maybe not…maybe it just felt like a long moment, a held breath.
Then he said, “No. That’s not what I want.”
I swallowed hard. Exhaled. “If I…if I take my clothes off and get in your bed right now, will you make love to me?”
I could barely see him in the dark, but I saw his shoulders heave with a deep breath. “Yeah.”
I crossed the room.
My hands went to the buttons of my pajama top — small ones, white, four of them — and I undid them one at a time because my fingers weren't entirely steady and I wasn't going to rush this. I'd been rushed through everything my whole life. Not this.
The top slid off my shoulders and I let it fall.
Forrest hadn't moved. He was watching me in the dark with an expression I couldn't fully read but could feel — the weight of it, the attention of it, nothing like being watched had ever felt before. No assessment. No ownership.
Just want.
I pushed the pajama pants down and stepped out of them and stood there in the moonlight in nothing at all and felt — not ashamed. Not ashamed, which was the thing that surprised me most. Just myself. Just my own skin, my own choice, my own feet on the wood floor.
"Willa," he said. Low.
"I know," I said. "You want to say something careful."
"I want to say you're beautiful."
The breath went out of me.
He pulled the covers back.
He was wearing a pair of boxers, nothing else…
and even in the dark, I could see he was hard, tenting his shorts, wanting me.
I took a shuddering breath and put one knee on the bed…
then slid into his lap, put my other knee by his hip to straddle him.
I felt his bare chest against me, dark wiry hair brushing my nipples, and I shuddered again and rested my forehead against his because it felt like I was going to shatter.
“We don’t have to—” he started.
I kissed him.
He kissed me back immediately, no hesitation this time, his hands coming up to my waist and pulling me closer, and I felt him hard against me and made a sound into his mouth that I'd never made before in my life.
His hands moved up my back, warm and certain, and I arched into them because I wanted more, wanted all of it, wanted everything the books had described and everything more that they hadn't.
"Forrest," I breathed against his mouth.
"I've got you." His lips moved to my jaw, my throat, and I tipped my head back and felt his teeth graze my pulse point and gasped.
His hands came up to cup my breasts and I made a sound that embarrassed me…
and then decided not to be embarrassed because his breath had gone ragged and his grip had tightened and I could feel exactly what I was doing to him.
That was new.
Knowing I was doing something to him. That this was mutual. That the wanting went both ways.
I rocked my hips, just slightly, and he made a low rough sound against my neck. The rough fabric of his boxers scraped against my clit, making me moan.
"Easy," he said.
"I don't want easy," I said.
He pulled back to look at me. Even in the dark I could see his expression—undone, wanting, fighting to hold onto something.
“How do you want it, Willa?” he asked.
I swallowed hard. “I want to know how much you want me.”
His expression shifted.
His lips curved.
Then he was holding me tight, and I was suddenly on my back—the breath wooshing out of me in a surprised laugh.
He followed me down, already moving, his mouth on my throat, my collarbone, the curve of my breast—taking his time in a way that made me want to grab his hair and pull, except I didn’t want him to stop, didn’t want to rush a single second of this.
His stubble dragged against my skin and I erupted in goosebumps, shivering and sighing.
His mouth closed over my nipple and I gasped, my back arching off the bed.
“More—” I begged. “Please.”
“Gonna be so good for you,” he murmured. Moved to the other breast, sucked hard…gave it some teeth. “Gonna be so fucking good for you, beautiful.”
He moved lower. My stomach. The swell of my hip. The soft skin under my belly button.
I realized where he was going and my whole body went tight.
He paused long enough for me to realize he was hesitating, and I breathed out a sharp, needy, “Yes.”
He pressed a kiss to the inside of my thigh.
I felt his breath first, warm, and then his mouth. I moaned loudly, clamping a hand down over my mouth…but I felt him reach up and gently take it away.
“I wanna hear you,” he breathed against my core. “Fuck, I need to hear you.”
So I let him.
The next sound I made was loud enough that I felt my face go hot even as I made it, and he made a low approving sound against me that undid what was left of my composure entirely.
Nothing had prepared me for this.
Not one single book.
They'd described it—God, had they described it, I'd read those scenes until the pages were soft—but they hadn't gotten at the specific reality of it, the way it built so slow and then wasn't slow at all, the way his hands held my hips like I was something worth holding onto, the way he paid attention like he was learning something he intended to remember.
The heroes in my books were skilled. Confident. They always knew exactly what to do.
Forrest knew exactly what to do.
But the books had missed the part where it felt like being known. Where it wasn't just sensation but something underneath sensation, something that had to do with the specific man and the specific dark and the way he'd said I want to say you're beautiful like it was a fact he'd been sitting on.
"Forrest—" His name came out broken.
He made that sound again. Like he was pleased with himself. Like he was pleased with me.
I grabbed his hair.
He didn't stop.